In a new OpEd, Dean Baker weighs in on the Fed's decision to raise interest rates later this year. Dean points out that this policy would have have a significant impact on the labor market, potentially costing the economy over 200,000 new jobs.

Following Syriza’s victory in last month’s elections in Greece, the ECB has “kicked” the new government “in the face,” Co-Director Mark Weisbrot wrote in a new op-ed. Mark discussed this and the Greek debt talks on BBC World TV's Business Edition. A recent CEPR paper finds that Greece will need a fiscal stimulus if it is to emerge from years of mass unemployment in the near future.

A weak trade performance and a sharp reversal in military spending held GDP growth to 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter. This brought the full year growth (Q4 to Q4) to 2.5 percent, only slightly above the growth rate of the prior three years.

CEPR's Dean Baker said that the Democrats’ plan for a financial transactions tax would help bring financial markets into the 21st century. He added that such steps could have a substantial impact and help build a stronger economy with more widely shared prosperity.

Though the unemployment rate edged up slightly to 5.7 percent in January, the overall jobs report was a good one. With the addition of jobs in January, the upward revisions of the prior months' data brings the 3 month average to 336,000 jobs. More in this month's Jobs Byte.

Haiti: Relief and Reconstruction Watch blog posts break down where things stand 5 years after Haiti’s devastating earthquake. Access to housing and good-paying jobs remain among pressing needs, while the U.N.-caused cholera epidemic that also began in 2010 continues to kill. Read Research Associate Jake Johnston's article in The Nation.